'I'm fat, so what? It's not an ugly word': Why the f-word might just finally be OK

A growing group of overweight activists claim it's OK and healthy to be "fat".
A sceptical Dina Rickman discovers their way of thinking could help
all young girls struggling with body confidence issues

Reclaiming the word 'fat': Marsha Coupé: 'Fat is a size. I am fat. It’s not an ugly word.'

Marsha Coupé is fat. Her word, not mine. As a “perfect size 28”, she can stretch to being called large. But there’s one thing she is not: “Obese is a medical word,” she says. “Fat is a size. I am fat. It’s not an ugly word.”

It’s an attitude which explains why, when a man jeered “you fatties” to Coupé and a similarly rubenesque friend as they walked down the street in Tunbridge Wells last summer, they burst out laughing rather than dissolving into tears. But in a world where the word fat is as offensive as any four letter word, their reaction was a little unusual.

Each week we’re bombarded with more news about our bodies, whether it’s a fad exercise trend, obesity warning or the latest scientific evidence on what will or will not make you gain weight. One in four adults in Britain might be obesebut being overweight remains taboo; a recent survey byWomen’s Health found 67 per cent of females would rather be considered stupid than fat.

Plus, if you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the last few days lounging around on someone else’s sofa, scoffing high fat, high sugar, high calorie Easter eggs and all the while feeling guilty about gaining a couple of pounds – especially after it took so long to shift your Christmas weight gain. But Coupé, 58, is one of a growing group of activists who are saying “enough”.

The fat acceptance movement began in California during the late 1960s, around the same time so-called second wave of feminism emerged. “Fat,” Coupé says, “has always been the quieter sister of feminism.” Back then the movement was more than radical; it was revolutionary. Some activists compared diets to genocide and others suggested the whole world should get fat.

Dr Ann Kaloski Nalylor, the York University academic who wrote the book on Fat Studies in the UK, prefers to call it fat 'activism' rather than 'acceptance'. “Acceptance can sound a bit resigned, a bit like toleration, whereas fat activism is about a recognition that all bodies are fine,” she says.

What Barbie could look like ifshe was plus-sized

Nowadays, at least in Britain, the fat movement is about challenging prejudices and accepting that it’s OK to be fat, although it still has a radical side. Some activists - gently described by medical experts as “misguided” - claim that the obesity epidemic is “baloney”. More than three-quarters of people in some English towns and cities are overweight or obese, recent data shows.

Others claim that you can live a normal and healthy life being fat. As public health specialist Dr Geof Rayner says, this is true. But “you can also live a normal life addicted to heroin”.

Train attack

Coupé became heavily involved in the fat movement after she was attacked on a near-empty train from London to her home in Kent in 2008. “I was sitting there reading the weekend Guardian and all of a sudden my paper was kicked out of my hand by a boot," she says. "This woman was screaming profanities at me, going ‘you big fat pig.’ All of this happened in a number of seconds.”

The beating stopped after a fellow passenger intervened. Instead of cowering, Coupé decided to go public, displaying her bruised face and blackened eye to the media and reporting her assailant to the police. She spoke out, she says, so she could tell the world she was not the only person who had been attacked for their size. “Fat people are often more afraid of taking public transportation than they are of eating a live octopus. That is where you are trapped,” she says.

This abuse of fat people, as Dr Kaloski Nalylor says, is “acceptable and common”. But because many people think being fat is wrong, they rarely see it as a prejudice at all.

The fatosphere

Two things have galvanised the fat acceptance movement in the UK over the last decade: that prejudice and the internet. A network of bloggers, tweeters, Redditors and Facebookers - nicknamed ‘the fatosphere’ - have found each other.

Miranda Cheesman, a 32-year-old stand up comic from London, felt isolated before going online. “When the internet exploded that was when I found out there were more people like me,” she says. “Suddenly I wasn’t the fattest girl in my school. I was one of many.”

Her online encounters led to offline meetings andCheesman has now started a club night aimed at larger women, Club Indulge, which she emphasises is designed to promote body confidence rather than obesity. It’s also a sanctuary for those who face abuse on nights out in “normal” clubs. “When people are in a group and the alcohol’s flowing people usually pick on anyone who is different. It tends to be the fat girl”, she tells me.

Stand-up comic MirandaCheesman (left) set up Club Indulge

Cheesman believes people abuse her because they see her weight as a choice - if she doesn’t like the abuse, she can just lose weight. “I lost weight, but I’m still a size 20, I’m still fat”, she says. “I’ve had eggs thrown at me and people insult me. People don’t understand how I feel when that happens. That doesn’t make me go ‘I’m just going to lose 10 stone.’”

The real radicals

Fat activists have a sense of acceptance about themselves that is seductive. Every single person running a body confidence campaign in the country should be forced to sit down and talk to Marsha Coupé - as should everyone who has ever looked at a fat person and assumed that they are lazy.

They are also right:it’s OK to be fat.But that does not mean there are no health risks associated with being overweight. For Coupé the “medical establishment” is programmed to see fat as bad. But Dr Ian Campbell MBE, a GP and the former chair of the National Obesity Forum, explains it in simple terms.

Fat and healthy?

“It is possible to be fat and healthy, but your chances of living a healthy long life are sharply reduced. Being overweight increases your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, some kinds of cancer, and premature death,” he tells me. “For the majority of us, overweight means a greater risk of ill-health.”

Away from the controversies, the real radical message of the fat acceptance movement is about loving yourself whatever your size. It’s a message that, 35 years after the publication ofFat is a Feminist Issue, we’d do well to listen to. As Coupé says: “There is not a woman on the planet who doesn’t struggle with their body image. What I don’t want to do is make my life less productive by taking in these messages that I need to be a smaller version of the type of woman that I am."

Dina Rickman is a freelance journalist and can be found tweeting @dinarickman